- From: Graham Klyne <gk@ninebynine.org>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 18:20:09 +0100
- To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
I was offline when I drafted my last response, and have now done a little digging. Short verion: [1] http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signtalk.htm [2] http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/autotalk.htm [3] http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm Longer version: It seems the keywords Sowa and Lattice appear in two different contexts: (a) Sowa's formation of an upper-level Ontology which is based on earlier philosophical works and appears in his book on Knowledge Representation. I don't think that is going to assist in the particular topic that lead to this discussion. (b) "John Sowa's potentially infinite open-ended lattice of theories", which might have some bearing on the topic.... This, too, seems to be related to upper-ontology work, but has more resonance with the what-does-a-URI-identify question. Folling this line, I found some possible jump-off points: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/autotalk.htm This slide suggests a link between theories and "what-is-identified": http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/autotalk.htm#s17 and: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signtalk.htm note reference to "Language Games": [[ Words only have a precise, formalizable meaning with respect to a particular language game. ]] and (this is a paper with much more detail, which I've yet to read): http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm #g -- At 10:52 22/07/03 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: >Mine too, but I'm almost terrified to leave this in >the hands of the experts. :-) > >I saw a reference to Scott's work in the Google listing. >I don't know what the originating relationships are. I >know that Sowa writes with unusual clarity on the issues >of concepts and set theory. He derives from Peirce and >clarifies that as well which is no mean feat. It may >be that for the architecture, one has to admit that >the theories about why it works are available but not >as important as capturing the how. In the case >of one URI = one concept, that is easy to do: >assignment. To the case of proving that there is >only one concept to which that assignment can be >made, that isn't doable except insofar as assignment >to the empty set (the theory of all theories) makes sense. >Sowa is clear about the lattice membership. > >len > >-----Original Message----- >From: Graham Klyne [mailto:GK@ninebynine.org] > >Getting out of my depth, but... does this have any relationship to the >work that Dana Scott did back in the 1970s on lattices and a theory of >computation, which in turn provided some basis for denotational semantics >of programming languages? I recall that the notions of approximation and >monotonicity came into that work, with some reference to functions being >ordered according to some notion of "accuracy". > >#g >-- > >At 09:45 22/07/03 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > > >You could research John Sowa's lattice theory for > >more precise language to describe this notion. > > > >Apologies but Google returns far too much material > >to provide a precise URI to start the research > >if you aren't already acquainted with it. And > >that tells us something about URIs and precise > >identification. :-) > > > >len > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Graham Klyne [mailto:gk@ninebynine.org] > > > >We agree that we, as people, try to use a URI to refer to > >a "single", more or less consistent, concept that is a topic of > >communication. But there is no way to formalize this single concept: I > >think the best we can do is to describe it as a kind of "locus" of > >denotations from interpretations that satisfy some formal statements we can > >make about it. > >------------------- >Graham Klyne ><GK@NineByNine.org> >PGP: 0FAA 69FF C083 000B A2E9 A131 01B9 1C7A DBCA CB5E ------------------- Graham Klyne <GK@NineByNine.org> PGP: 0FAA 69FF C083 000B A2E9 A131 01B9 1C7A DBCA CB5E
Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2003 13:36:48 UTC